


SS Marina

by obfuscatress



Category: Tintin - All Media Types
Genre: a study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 01:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obfuscatress/pseuds/obfuscatress
Summary: Tintin will never understand the Captain's love for the sea.





	SS Marina

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was crafted through the lense of a long-standing love for the various renditions of Hergé's Tintin - from the comics to the series to the most recent film - but probably resonates best within the context of the 1990s TV series.

 

He’ll never understand the Captain’s love for the sea. On days when the sun is out and the world’s aglitter, Tintin stands at the bow of the ship with his hands braced on the railing and lets the wind assault him with the salty mist of the ocean, the sound of yielding water below carrying him for miles.

Today, he gets a grey sky that stretches further than his eye can see for the fifth day in a row and even Tintin’s inimitably high spirits are beginning to falter. Every surface on the ship is damp even though it hasn’t rained in two days now. He supposes it’s because metal is not land - a fact that Snowy keeps reminding him of with a put out expression every time they climb on deck - and drought can’t be anything but an alien concept on a vessel forged to part water.

No matter how often his flights turn into crash landing, Tintin would still prefer being onboard a plummeting Bloch 220 to this never ending voyage across a mass that neither quiets nor roars, but no one’s forced him onto this ship. He isn’t chasing a lead, isn’t held hostage, or crammed into a little radio room running transmissions to keep a cover; this is a plank he walked to humor the Captain, so he makes his rounds on the deck without complaint and tries to focus on the bright spots.

He thinks of the candlelit evenings in the Captain’s quarters spent playing blackjack around a little scrap of a table that’s bolted to the floor, the rounds fought valiantly more for pride. The room is entirely too crowded between the first mate, the chief engineer, Tintin, and the Captain, but their nights still drag out well past midnight, the Captain four nightcaps in by the time they finally call it quits.

And then there are the afternoons up on the bridge when the Captain is so much in his element, Tintin all but forgets the view in favor of watching him run his ship, unyielding. He’s a solid presence among the crew, the thump of his boots as ever present a fixture on the ships as the smell of his pipe-smoke-infused jumper seems to be in Tintin’s life. 

How he’s wormed himself into such a position, Tintin doesn’t know. One night, he was nothing more that a captive on some drunkard’s ship and now he’s willingly sailing halfway across the world for the very same man. They’ve huddled together for warmth in the Andes, traversed deserts and jungles alike. Even in his worst moments - amid the drinking and the smoking and the swearing - wedged between his pessimism and a brimstone temper, there is warmth to him.

Tintin sees it on frosty nights at Marlinspike hall when the Captain is chewing on the end of his pipe by the fireplace, a hand absentmindedly scratching behind Snowy’s ear as Tintin reads the paper aloud. It’s embedded in the way he slows his pace to adjust to Tintin’s shorter gait when they’re walking the grounds after a night of heavy rainfall, the soft smell of overturned air all around them. It’s scratched into his laugh where it catches, the sound brash and organic like an off-white thread of wool.

There is nowhere Tintin would rather be than by the Captain’s side, be it during a trying adventure or the lax stretches of time after.

As if summoned by the thought, the Captain’s voice sounds behind him. “Penny for your thoughts.” 

Tintin must have heard his boots on the hull all along and yet, he’s taken by surprise.

“I think I may have briefly gotten lost in the sea,” he says. It’s an evasion that sounds like a confession and Tintin marvels at the strange aftertaste of the words.

The Captain must sense his mood, because he says: “She’s drowned many a more adept sailor than you, lad.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Tintin concedes, a smile dancing over his lips.

She’s come for him before, the Captain, too.

They’ve sat stranded in boats and on rafts more times than he cares to remember, but the waters have always delivered them. Never has he felt so helpless as in a storm at sea and yet, with the Captain manning their makeshift tubs, he has always remained afloat.

“It doesn’t well to dwell, lad,” the Captain tells him, and Tintin realises he’s gotten lost in thought again, although this time, it isn’t the sea that’s drawn his attention.

For all the internal workings of the ship the Captain must must be considering at any given moment, he too is stood there - eyes unwavering on Tintin’s - leaning against the railing, his back to the sea.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://obfuscatress.tumblr.com/) or [twitter.](https://twitter.com/Shippress)


End file.
